provenance access
n.
A technique of locating relevant materials based on characteristics of the origins of the materials (the provenance).
Notes
Provenance access complements subject access. For example, reviewing a repository's collections, listed by provenance, can often be a useful means of locating materials relevant to a query. For example, a researcher studying Phoenix in the 19th century might start with the papers of the George Luhrs and Dwight Heard because of their prominence as civic leaders. That researcher might reject the papers of city archaeologist Odd Halseth, because his work related to pre-Columbian cultures.
